"How are the people to be fed and employed? That is the question which still baffles an age that can transmit a message round the world in a moment of time, and point out the locality of a planet never yet seen. There is the question which founders both the bold and the wise."
Up to this time there had been repeated cases of partial famine, but now the nation was startled by the news of the almost total failure of the crop of potatoes, the single description of food upon which the people of Ireland had been reduced to depend. Constant cropping of the soil, returning to it none of the manure, because of the necessity for exporting almost the whole of its products, had produced disease in the vegetable world—precisely as the want of proper nourishment produces it in the animal world—and now a cry of famine rang throughout the land. The poor-houses were everywhere filled, while the roads, and the streets, and the grave-yards were occupied by the starving and the naked, the dying and the dead; and the presses of England were filled with denunciations of English and Irish landholders, who desired to make food dear, while men, women, and children were perishing by hundreds of thousands for want of food. Thus far, Ireland had been protected in the market of England, as some small compensation for the sacrifice she had made of her manufacturing interests; but now, small as has been the boon, it was to be withdrawn, precisely as we see to have been the case with the poor people of Jamaica. Like them, the Irish had become poor, and their trade had ceased to be of value, although but seventy years before they had been England'sbestcustomers. The system had exhausted all the foreign countries with which England had been permitted to maintain what is denominated free trade—India, Portugal, Turkey, the West Indies, and Ireland herself—and it had become necessary to make an effort to obtain markets in the only prosperous countries of the world, those which had to a greater or less extent placed the consumer by the side of the producer, to wit—this country, France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia—and the mode of accomplishing this was that of offering them the same freedom of trade in food by which Ireland had been ruined. The farmers were everywhere invited to exhaust their soil by sending its products to England to be consumed; and the corn-laws were repealed for the purpose of enabling them to impoverish themselves by entering into competition with the starving Irishman, who was thus at once deprived of the market of England, as by the Act of Union he had been deprived of his own. The cup of wretchedness was before well nigh full, but it was now filled. The price of food fell, and the labourer was ruined, for the whole product of his land would scarcely pay his rent. The landlord was ruined, for he could collect no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. His land was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid of which property could be summarily disposed of at public sale, and the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it. The landholder of Jamaica, exhausted by the system, had had his property taken from him at a price fixed by Parliament, and the proceeds applied to the discharge of debts incurred to his English agents, and now the same Parliament provided for the transfer of Irish property with a view to the payment of the same class of debts. The impoverished landholder now experienced the same fate that had befallen his poor tenant, and from that date to this, famine and pestilence, levellings and evictions, have been the order of the day. Their effect has everywhere been to drive the poor people from the land, and its consequences are seen in the fact that the population numbered, in 1850,one million six hundred and fifty-nine thousand less than it did in1840; while the starving population of the towns had largely increased. The county of Cork had diminished 222,000, while Dublin had grown in numbers 22,000. Galway had lost 125,000, while the city had gained 7422. Connaught had lost 414,000, while Limerick and Belfast had gained 30,000. The number of inhabited houses had fallen from 1,328,000 to 1,047,000, or more than twenty per cent. Announcing these startling facts, the LondonTimesstated that "for a whole generation man had been a drug in Ireland, and population a nuisance." The "inexhaustible Irish supply had," as it continued, "kept down the price of English labour," but this cheapness of labour had "contributed vastly to the improvement and power" of England, and largely to "the enjoyment of those who had money to spend." Now, however, a change appeared to be at hand, and it was to be feared that the prosperity of England, based as it had been on cheap Irish labour, might be interfered with, as famine and pestilence, evictions and emigration, were thinning out the Celts who had so long, as it is said, been "hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Saxon." Another of the advocates of the system which has exhausted and ruined Ireland, and is now transferring its land to the men who have enriched themselves by acting as middlemen between the producers and consumers of the world, rejoicing in the great number of those who had fled from their native soil to escape the horrors of starvation and pestilence, declares that this is to be regarded as the joyful side of the case. "What," it asks,
"Will follow? This great good, among others—thatthe stagnant weight of unemployed populationin these insulated realms is never likely again to accumulate to the dangerous amount which there was sometimes cause to apprehend that, from unforeseen revulsions in industry or foreign trade, it might have done. A natural vent is now so thoroughly opened, and so certain to grow wider and clearer everyday, that the overflow will pass off whenever a moderate degree of pressure recurs. Population, skill, and capital, also, will no longer wait in consternation till they are half spent with watching and fear. The way is ready. They will silently shift their quarters when the competition or depression here becomes uncomfortable. Every family has already friends or acquaintances who have gone before them over sea. Socially, our insulation as a people is proved, by the census of 1851, to be at an end."—Daily News.
TheTimes, too, rejoices in the prospect that the resources ofIreland will now probably be developed, as the Saxon takes the placeof the Celt, who has so long hewn the wood and drawn the water for hisSaxon masters. "Prosperity and happiness may," as it thinks,
"Some day reign over that beautiful island. Its fertile soil, its rivers and lakes, its water-power, its minerals, and other materials for the wants and luxuries of man, may one day be developed; but all appearances are against the belief that this will ever happen in the days of the Celt. That tribe will soon fulfil the great law of Providence which seems to enjoin and reward the union of races. It will mix with the Anglo-American, and be known no more as a jealous and separate people. Its present place will be occupied by the more mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which has long borne the yoke of sturdy industry in this island, which can submit to a master and obey the law. This is no longer a dream, for it is a fact now in progress, and every day more apparent."
Commenting upon the view thus presented, an American journalist most truly says—
"There is a cold-blooded atrocity in the spirit of these remarks for which examples will be sought in vain, except among the doctors of the free-trade school. Naturalists have learned to look with philosophical indifference upon the agonies of a rabbit or a mouse expiring in an exhausted receiver, but it requires long teaching from the economists before men's hearts can be so steeled, that after pumping out all the sustenance of vitality from one of the fairest islands under the sun, they can discourse calmly upon its depopulation as proof of the success of the experiment, can talk with bitter irony of 'thatstrangeregion of the earth where such a people, affectionate and hopeful, genial and witty, industrious and independent, was produced andcould not stay,' and can gloat in the anticipation that prosperity and happiness may some day reign over that beautiful island, and its boundless resources for the wants and luxuries of man be developed, not for the Celt, but 'for a more mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which can submit to a master and obey the law.'"—Albany Journal.
TheTimesrejoices that the place of the Celt is in future to be occupied by cattle, as sheep already occupy the place of the Highlander expelled from the land in which, before Britain undertook to underwork all other nations and thus secure a monopoly for "the workshop of the world," his fathers were as secure in their rights as was the landowner himself. Irish journals take a different view of the prospect. They deprecate the idea of the total expulsion of the native race, and yet they fear that
"There is no doubt that in a few years more, if some stop is not put to the present outpouring of the people to America, and latterly to Australia, there will not be a million of the present race of inhabitants to be found within the compass of the four provinces."
"No thoughts of the land of their birth," it continues, "seems to enter their minds, although the Irish people have been proverbial for their attachment to their country."—Connaught Western Star.
A recent journal informs us that
"The Galway papers are full of the most deplorable accounts of wholesale evictions, or rather exterminations, in that miserable country. The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a time. As many as 203 men, women, and children have been driven upon the roads and ditches by way of one day's work, and have now no resource but to beg their bread in desolate places, or to bury their griefs, in many instances for ever, within the walls of the Union workhouse. Land agents direct the operation. The work is done by a large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the latter, 'the Crowbar Brigade' advances to the devoted township, takes possession of the houses, such as they are, and, with a few turns of the crowbar and a few pulls at a rope, bring down the roof, and leave nothing but a tottering chimney, if even that. The sun that rose on a village sets on a desert; the police return to their barracks, and the people are nowhere to be found, or are vainly watching from some friendly covert for the chance of crouching once more under their ruined homes.
"What to the Irish heart is more painful than even the large amount and stern method of the destruction, is that the authors this time are Saxon strangers. It is a wealthy London company that is invading the quiet retreats of Connemara, and robbing a primitive peasantry of its last hold on the earth; The Law Life Assurance Company having advanced, we believe, £240,000 on the Martin estates, has now become the purchaser under the Encumbered Estates Acts, and is adopting these summary but usual measures to secure the forfeited pledge. That gentlemen, many of whom have never set foot in Ireland, and who are wealthy enough to lend a quarter of a million of money, should exact the last penny from a wretched peasantry who had no hand, or voice in the transaction which gave them new masters, seems utterly intolerable to the native Irish reason."
With the growth of the value of land, man has always become free. With the decline in its value, man has always become enslaved. If we desire to find the cause of the enormous destruction of life in Ireland, even in this day of boasted civilization—if we desire to find the cause of the eviction of tenant and landlord, and the decline in the value of land, we need scarcely look beyond the following paragraph:—
"The cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives, has been destroyed; the 3400 silk-looms of the Liberty have been destroyed; the stuff and serge manufacture, which employed 1491 operatives, have been destroyed; the calico-looms of Balbriggan have been destroyed; the flannel manufacture of Rathdrum has been destroyed; the blanket manufacture of Kilkenny has been destroyed; the camlet trade of Bandon, which produced £100,000 a year, has been destroyed; the worsted and stuff manufactures of Waterford have been destroyed; the rateen and frieze manufactures of Carrick-on-Suir have been destroyed. One business alone survives! One business alone thrives and flourishes, and dreads no bankruptcy! That fortunate business—which the Union Act has not struck down, but which the Union Act has stood by—which the absentee drain has not slackened, but has stimulated—which the drainage Acts and navigation laws of the Imperial Senate have not deadened but invigorated—that favoured, and privileged, and patronized business is the Irish coffin-maker's."[119]
To the separation of the consumer from the producer resulting from the adoption of the system which has for its object the establishment of a monopoly of the machinery of manufacture for the world, are due the exhaustion of Ireland, the ruin of its landholders, the starvation of its people, and the degradation in the eyes of the world of the country which has furnished to the continent its best soldiers, and to the empire not only its most industrious and intelligent labourers, but also its Burke, its Grattan, its Sheridan, and its Wellington. And yet we find theTimesrejoicing at the gradual disappearance of the native population, and finding in
"The abstraction of the Celtic race at the rate of a quarter of a million a year, a surer remedy forthe inveterate Irish disease, than any human wit could have imagined."
The "inveterate Irish disease" here spoken of is a total absence of demand for labour, resulting from the unhappy determination of the people of England to maintain the monopoly of the power to manufacture for the world. The sure remedy for this is found in famines, pestilences, and expatriation, the necessary results of the exhaustion of the land which follows the exportation of its raw products. A stronger confirmation of the destructive character of such a course of policy than is contained in the following paragraph could scarcely be imagined:—
"When the Celt has crossed the Atlantic, he begins for the first time in his life to consume the manufactures of this country, and indirectly to contribute to its customs. We may possibly live to see the day when the chief product of Ireland will be cattle, and English and Scotch the majority of her population. The nine or ten millions of Irish, who by that time will have settled in the United States, cannot be less friendly to England, and will certainly be much better customers to her than they now are."—LondonTimes.
When the Celt leaves Ireland he leaves an almost purely agricultural country, and in such countries man generally approaches nearly to the condition of a slave. When he comes here he comes to a country in which to some little extent the plough and the loom have been enabled to come together; and here he becomes a freeman and a customer of England.
The nation that commences by exporting raw products must end by exporting men; and if we desire evidence of this, we need only look to the following figures, furnished by the last four censuses of Ireland:—
1821…….. 6,801,827 1831…….. 7,767,401——Increase, 965,574 1841…….. 8,175,124——Increase, 407,723 1851…….. 6,515,794——Decrease, 1,659,330
To what causes may this extraordinary course of events be attributed? Certainly not to any deficiency of land, for nearly one-third of the whole surface, including millions of acres of the richest soils of the kingdom, remains in a state of nature. Not to original inferiority of the soil in cultivation, for it has been confessedly among the richest in the empire. Not to a deficiency of mineral ores or fuel, for coal abounds, and iron ores of the richest kind, as well as those of other metals, exist in vast profusion. Not to any deficiency in the physical qualities of the Irishman, for it is an established fact that he is capable of performing far more labour than the Englishman, the Frenchman, or the Belgian. Not to a deficiency of intellectual ability, for Ireland has given to England her most distinguished soldiers and statesmen; and we have in this country everywhere evidence that the Irishman is capable of the highest degree of intellectual improvement. Nevertheless, while possessed of every advantage that nature could give him, we find the Irishman at home a slave to the severest taskmasters, and reduced to a condition of poverty and distress, such as is exhibited in no other portion of the civilized world. No choice is now left him but between expatriation and starvation, and therefore it is that we see him everywhere abandoning the home of his fathers, to seek elsewhere that subsistence which Ireland, rich as she is in soil and in her minerals, in her navigable rivers, and in her facilities of communication with the world, can no longer afford him.
That the process of eviction is still continued on an extensive scale is shown by the following extracts from Sir Francis Head's work on Ireland, just issued from the press:—
"Here almost immediately I first met with that afflicting spectacle, or rather spectre, that almost without intermission haunted me through the whole remainder of my tour, namely, stout stone-built cabins; unroofed for the purpose of evicting therefrom their insolvent tenants."—P. 110
"On conversing with the master, I ascertained from him that Lord Lucan's evictions have ceased, but that Lord Erne evicted on Saturday last."[120]—P. 115
"'Is this system of eviction,' said I to the driver, pointing to a small cluster of unroofed cabins we were passing at the moment, 'good or bad?' 'Well! yere Arn'r!' he replied, 'ut's good and ut's bad. Ut's good for them that hould large lands, bad for the small. Ut laves nothing for tham but the workhouse.'"—P. 121.
The tendency of the system which looks to the exportation of raw produce and the exhaustion of the soil is always toward the consolidation of the land, because the exportation of population, whether from Ireland, India, or Virginia, always follows in the wake of the exportation of food and other raw commodities.
"Among the men were only four that could fairly be called 'able-bodied;' each of them told me he had been evicted by Lord Lucan. I asked the master what had become of the rest. His answer was very instructive. 'Most of them,' said he, 'if they can scrape up half-a-crown, go to England, from whence, after some little time, they send from 2s. 6d. to 10s. and, as soon as their families getthat, they are off to them.'
"'Does the father go first?' I thoughtlessly asked.
"'Oh, no! we keephimto the last. One daughter went off to England from here a short time ago, and sent 7s. 6d.Thattook out the mother and another sister. In a few weeks the mother and sister sent enough to get over the remaining two sons and the father. Total of the family, 6.'"—P. 127.
In the above passage we have the equivalent of the exportation of the negro from the Northern Slave States. Husbands and wives, parents and children, are forced to fly from each other, never to meet again unless those who emigrate can save means to send for those who are left behind.
"We were now joined by the head-steward—a sedate, highly intelligent, respectable-looking Scotchman, who has been in Ireland thirteen years. He told me that the number of persons that had been ejected was about 10,000, of whom one-tenth were employed by Lord Lucan, who had given most of them cottages."
"We passed a cabin, and, closing my umbrella and leaving it on the car, I walked in.
"'Will yere Arn'r take a sate?' said a woman about thirty-eight, with a fine, open countenance, her eyes being listlessly fixed on the daylight.
"I sat down. On her lap was an infant. Three bare-footed children, as if hatching eggs, sat motionless on the edge of a peat fire, which appeared to be almost touching their naked toes; above the embers was demurely hanging a black pot. Opposite sat, like a bit of gnarled oak, the withered grandmother. The furniture was composed of a dingy-coloured wooden wardrobe, with a few plates on the top, and one bed close to the fire. There was no chimney but the door, on the threshold of which stood, looking exceedingly unhappy, four dripping wet fowls; at the far end of the chamber was a regular dungheap, on which stood an ass.
"'Where is your husband, my good woman?' I said to the youngest of the women.
"'In England, yere Arn'r,' she replied, 'saking work.'"—P. 132.
"Seeking work!" and yet Ireland abounds, in the richest land uncultivated, and mineral wealth untouched, because the system forbids that men should combine their efforts together for the improvement of their common condition.
"After trotting on for about a mile, and after I had left Lord Lucan's property, I came as usual to a small village of unroofed cabins, from the stark walls of which, to my astonishment, I saw here and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, I beheld a picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the interstices of the walls of their ancient homes.
"'This is a quare place, yere Arn'r!' said a fine, honest-looking woman, kindly smiling to me, adding, 'Sit down, yere Arn'r!'
"One of her four children got up and offered me his stool.
"Under another temporary shed I found a tall woman heavy with child, a daughter ahout sixteen, and four younger children—herhusband was also in England, 'sakin work.' I entered two or three more of these wretched habitations, around which were the innumerable tiny fields; surrounded by those low tottering stone walls I have already described.* * *—P. 136.
"They were really good people, and from what I read in their countenances, I feel confident, that if, instead of distributing among them a few shillings, I had asked them to feedme, with the kindest hospitality they would readily have done so, and that with my gold in my pocket I might have slept among them in the most perfect security.
"The devotional expressions of the lower class of Irish, and the meekness and resignation with which they bear misfortune or affliction, struck, me very forcibly. 'I haven't aten a bit this blessed day, glory be to God!' said one woman, 'Troth, I've been suffering lhong time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God!' said another. On entering a strange cabin, the common salutation is, 'God save all here!' On passing a gang of comrades at labour, a man often says, 'God bless the work, boys!'"—P. 137.
The extirpation of the people results necessarily in the decay of the towns, as is here shown:—
"When my bill came,—for one's bill at an inn, like death, is sure to come,—I asked the waiter what effect the evictions in the neighbourhood had had on the town.
"'They have ruined it,' he replied; 'the poor used to support the rich; now that the poor are gone the rich shopkeepers are all failing. Our town is full of empty shops, and, after all, the landlord himself is now being ruined!'"—P. 147.
Cheap labour and cheap land are always companions. In Jamaica andIndia, land, as we have seen, is almost valueless. How it is inIreland may be seen by the following passage:—
"Adjoining is a similar property of about 10,000 acres, purchased, Iwas informed, by Captain Houston, a short time ago, at the rate of2-1/2d. an acre."—P. 153.
In a paper recently read before the statistical section of the British Association, it is shown that the estates recently purchased in Ireland by English capital embraced 403,065 acres, and that the purchase money had been £1,095,000, or about £2 15s. ($13.20) per acre, being little more than is paid for farms with very moderate improvements in the new States of the Mississippi Valley.
Why land is cheap and labour badly rewarded may easily be seen on a perusal of the following passages:—
"'Chickuns are about 5d. a couple, dooks 10d. A couple of young gaise10d; when auld, not less than 1s. or 14d.'
"'And turkeys?' I asked.
"'I can't say; we haven't many of thim in the counthry, and I don't want to tell yere Arn'r a lie. Fish, little or nothing. A large turbot, of 30 lbs. weight, for 3s. Lobsters, a dozen for 4d. Soles, 2d. or 3d. a piece. T'other day I bought a turbot, of 15 lbs. weight, for a gentleman, and I paid 18d. for ut.'"—P. 178.
"'What do you pay for your tea and sugar here?' I inquired.
"'Very dare, sir,' he replied. 'We pay 5s. for tea, 5d. for brown sugar, and 8d. for white; that is, if we buy a single pound.'"—P.187.
The sugar of the labourer of Jamaica exchanges in Manchester for three shillings, of which he receives perhaps one, and he perishes because of the difficulty of obtaining machinery, or clothing. The Hindoo sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back in the form of cloth at eighteen or twenty pence. The Virginia negro raises tobacco which exchanges for six shillings' worth of commodities, of which he and his owner obtain three pence. The poor Irishman raises chickens which sell in London for shillings, of which he receives pence, and thus a pound of sugar which had yielded the free negro of Jamaica two pence, exchanges in the West of Ireland for a pair of chickens or a dozen lobsters. The reader who may study these facts will readily understand the destructive effects on the value of land and labour resulting from the absence of markets, such as arise naturally where the plough and the loom are permitted, in accordance with the doctrines of Adam Smith, to take their places by the side of each other. More than seventy years since he denounced the system which looked to compelling the exports of raw produce as one productive of infinite injustice, and certainly the histories of Jamaica and Virginia, Ireland and India, since his time, would afford him, were he now present, little reason for a change of opinion.
It is common to ascribe the state of things now existing in Ireland to the rapid growth of population; and that in its turn is charged to the account of the potato, the excessive use of which, as Mr. McCulloch informs his readers, has lowered the standard of living and tended to the multiplication of men, women, and children. "The peasantry of Ireland live," as he says, "in miserable mud cabins, without either a window or a chimney, or any thing that can be called furniture," and are distinguished from their fellow labourers across the Channel by their "filth and misery," and hence it is, in his opinion, that they work for low wages. We have here effect substituted for cause. The absence of demand for labour causes wages to be low, and those wages will procure nothing but mud cabins and potatoes. It is admitted everywhere throughout the continent of Europe that the introduction of the potato has tended greatly to the improvement of the condition of the people; but then, there is no portion of the continent in which it is used, where it constitutes an essential part of the governmental policy to deprive millions of people of all mode of employment except agriculture, and thus placing those millions at such a distance from market that the chief part of their labour and its products is lost in the effort to reach that market, and their land is exhausted because of the impossibility of returning to the soil any portion of the crop yielded by it. Commercial centralization produces all these effects. It looks to the destruction of the value of labour and land, and to the enslavement of man. It tends to the division of the whole population into two classes, separated by an impassable gulf—the mere labourer and the land-owner. It tends to the destruction of the power of association for any purpose of improvement, whether by the making of roads or by the founding of schools, and of course to the prevention of the growth of towns, as we see to have been the case with Jamaica, so barbarous in this respect when compared with Martinique or Cuba, islands whose governments have not looked to the perpetual divorce of the hammer and the harrow. The decay of towns in Ireland, subsequent to the Union, led to absenteeism, and thus added to the exhaustion of the land, because Irish wheat was now needed to pay not only for English cloth but for English services; and the more the centralization resulting from absenteeism, the greater necessarily was the difficulty of maintaining the productive powers of the soil. Mr. McCulloch, however, assures his readers that "it is not easy to imagine any grounds for pronouncing the expenditure of the rent at home "more beneficial" to the country than if it had been expended abroad. (Principles, 157.) Another distinguished political economist says—
"Many persons, also, perplexed by the consideration that all the commodities which are exported as remittances of the absentee's income are exports for which no return is obtained; that they are as much lost to this country as if they were a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea. This is unquestionably true; but it must be recollected that whatever is unproductively consumed, is, by the very terms of the proposition, destroyed, without producing any return"—Senior's Political Economy, 160.
This view is, as the reader will see, based upon the idea of the total destruction of the commodities consumed. Were it even correct, it would still follow that there had been transferred from Ireland to England a demand for services of a thousand kinds, tending to cause a rise in the price of labour in the one and a fall in the other;—but if it were altogether incorrect, it would then follow, necessarily, that the loss to the countrywouldbe as great as if the remittances were "a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea." That it is altogether incorrect the reader may readily satisfy himself. Man consumes much, but he destroys nothing. In eating food he is merely acting as a machine for preparing the elements of which it is composed for future production; and the more he can take out of the land the more he can return to it, and the more rapid will be the improvement in the productive power of the soil. If the market be at hand, he can take hundreds of bushels of turnips, carrots, or potatoes, or tons of hay, from an acre of land, and he can vary the character of his culture from year to year, and the more he borrows from the great bank the more he can repay to it, the more he can improve his mind and his cultivation, and the more readily he can exchange for improved machinery by aid of which to obtain still increased returns. If, however, the market be distant, he must raise only those things that will bear carriage, and which from their small yield command a high price, and thus is he limited in his cultivation, and the more he is limited the more rapidly he exhausts his land, the less is his power to obtain roads, to have association with his fellow-men, to obtain books, to improve his mode of thought, to make roads, or to purchase machinery. Such is the case even when he is compelled to sell and buy in distant markets, but still worse is it when, as in the case of the rent of the absentee, nothing is returned to the land, for then production diminishes without a corresponding diminution of the rent, and the poor cultivator is more and more thrown upon the mercy of the land-owner or his agent, and becomes, as we see to have been the case in Jamaica and India, practically a slave. This state of things has in all countries been followed by a diminution of population resulting from starvation or from exportation; and hence it is that we see the destruction of life in Ireland, India, and the West Indies, while from the two former vast numbers are annually exported, many of them to perish in the new countries to which they are driven. Out of 99,000 that left Ireland for Canada in a single year, no less than 13,000 perished on shipboard, and thousands died afterward of disease, starvation, and neglect; and thus it is that we have the horrors of "the middle passage" repeated in our day. It is the slave trade of the last century reproduced on a grander scale and on a new theatre of action.
We are told of the principle of population that men increase faster than food, and, for evidence that such must always be the case, are pointed to the fact that when men are few in number they always cultivate the rich soils, and then food is abundant, but as population increases they are forced to resort to the poor soils, and then food becomes scarce. That the contrary of all this is the fact is shown by the history of England, France, Italy, Greece, India, and every other nation of the world, and is proved in our own day by all that is at this moment being done in this country. It is proved by the fact that Ireland possesses millions of acres of the most fertile soil remaining in a state of nature, and so likely to remain until she shall have markets for their produce that will enable their owners readily to exchange turnips, potatoes, cabbages, and hay, for cloth, machinery, and MANURE.
It is singular that all the political economists of England should so entirely have overlooked the fact that man is a mere borrower from the earth, and that when he does not pay his debts, she does as do all other creditors, that is, she expels him from his holding. England makes of her soil a grand reservoir for the waste yielded by all the sugar, coffee, wool, indigo, cotton and other raw commodities of almost half the world, and thus does she raise a crop that has been valued at five hundred millions of dollars, or five times more than the average value of the cotton crop produced by so many millions of people in this country; and yet so important is manure that she imports in a single year more than two hundred thousand tons of guano, at a cost of almost two millions of pounds, and thus does she make labour productive and land valuable. Nevertheless, her writers teach other nations that the true mode of becoming rich is to exhaust the land by sending from it all its products in their rudest state, and then, when the people of Ireland attempt to follow the soil which they have sent to England, the people of the latter are told by Mr. McCulloch that
"The unexampled misery of the Irish people is directly owing to the excessive augmentation of their numbers; and, nothing can be more perfectly futile than to expect any real or lasting amendment of their situation until an effectual check has been given to the progress of population. It is obvious too," he continues, "that the low and degraded condition into which the people of Ireland are now sunk is the condition to which every people must be reduced whose numbers continue, for any considerable period, to increase faster than the means of providing for their comfortable and decent subsistence."—Principles, 383.
The population of Ireland did increase with some rapidity, and the reason for this was to be found in the fact that poverty had not yet produced that demoralization which restricts the growth of numbers. The extraordinary morality of the women of Ireland is admitted everywhere. In England it is remarked upon by poor-law commissioners, and here it is a fact that cannot fail to command the attention of the most superficial observer. How it is at home we are told by Sir Francis Head, whose statements on this subject cannot be read without interest:—
"As regards the women of Ireland, their native modesty cannot fail to attract the observation of any stranger. Their dress was invariably decent, generally pleasing, and often strikingly picturesque. Almost all wore woollen petticoats, dyed by themselves, of a rich madder colour, between crimson and scarlet. Upon their shoulders, and occasionally from their heads, hung, in a variety of beautiful folds, sometimes a plaid of red and green, sometimes a cloak, usually dark blue or dingy white. Their garments, however, like those of the men, were occasionally to be seen in tatters."—P. 119.
Anxious to be fully informed on the subject, the traveller took occasion to interrogate various police-officers and gentlemen, and the result of his inquiries will be seen on a perusal of the following questions and answers:—
Q. "How long have you been on duty in Galway?"
A. "Above nine years."
Q. "Have you much crime here?"
A. "Very little; it principally consists of petty larcenies."
Q. "Have there been here many illegitimate children?"
A. "Scarcely any. During the whole of the eight years I have been on duty here I have not known of an illegitimate child being reared up in any family in the town."
Q. "What do you mean by being reared up?"
A. "I mean that, being acquainted with every family in Galway, I have never known of a child of that description being born."—P. 208.
Q. "How long have you been on duty here?"
A. "Only six months."
Q. "During that time have you known of any instance of an illegitimate child being born in the village of the Claddagh?"
A. "Not only have I never known of such a case, but I have never heard any person attribute such a case to the fisherwomen of Claddagh. I was on duty in the three islands of Arran, inhabited almost exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never heard of one of their women—who are remarkable for their beauty—having had an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it attributed to them; indeed, I have been informed by Mr. ——-, a magistrate who has lived in Galway for eight years, and has been on temporary duty in the island of Arran, that he also had never heard there of a case of that nature."—P. 209.
A. "I have been here better than two years, and during that time I have never known of any woman of Claddagh having had an illegitimate child—indeed, I have never even heard of it."
Q. "Have you ever known of any such case in Galway?"
A. "Oh, I think there have been some cases intown. Of my own knowledge I cannot say so, but I haveheardof it."—Ibid.
Q. "How long have you been in charge of the Claddagh village?"
A. "I have been nine years here, for five years of which last March Ihave been in charge of Claddagh."
Q. "During that time has there been an illegitimate child bornthere?"
A. "No, I have never heard of it, and if it had happened I should have been sure to have heard of it, as they wouldn't have allowed her to stop in the village."—P. 210.
The reader will now be pleased to recollect that the production of food, flax, cotton, and other raw commodities requires hard labour and exposure, and it is for such labour men are fitted—that the conversion of food, flax, and cotton into cloth requires little exertion and is unattended with exposure, and is therefore especially fitted for the weaker sex—and that when the work of conversion is monopolized by people who live at a distance from the place of production, the woman and the child must be driven to the labour of the field; and therefore it is that we see the women and the children of Jamaica and Carolina, of Portugal and Turkey, of India and of Ireland, compelled to remain idle or to cultivate the land, because of the existence of a system which denies to all places in the world but one the power to bring the consumer to the side of the producer. It was time for woman to take up the cause of her sex, and it may be hoped that she will prosecute the inquiry into the causes of the demoralization and degradation of the women of so large a portion of the world, until she shall succeed in extirpating the system so long since denounced by the greatest of all economists, as "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of man [and woman] kind."
* * * * *
Centralization tends everywhere to the exhaustion of the land, and to its consolidation in fewer hands, and with every step in this direction man becomes less and less free to determine for whom he will work and what shall be his reward. That such has been the tendency in Jamaica, India, and Ireland, has been shown, and it is now proposed to show that the same tendency exists in Scotland, the Northern part of which has become exclusively agricultural as even its home manufactures have passed away, and must look to a distance for a market for all its products, involving, of course, a necessity for exhausting the land.
The Highland tacksman, originally co-proprietor of the land of the clan, became at first vassal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at will, and thus the property in land passed from the many into the hands of the few, who have not hesitated to avail themselves of the power so obtained. The payment of money rents was claimed by them eighty years since, but the amount was very small, as is shown by the following passage from a work of that date:—
"The rent of these lands is very trifling compared to their extent, but compared to the number of mouths which a farm maintains, it will perhaps be found that a plot of land in the highlands of Scotland feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the richest provinces."—Stewart's Political Economy, vol. i. chap. xvi.
Of some of the proceedings of the present century the following sketch is furnished by a recent English writer:—
"Even in the beginning of the 19th century the rental imposts were very small, as is shown by the work of Mr. Lock, (1820,) the steward of the Countess of Sutherland, who directed the improvements on her estates. He gives for instance the rental of the Kintradawell estate for 1811, from which it appears that up to then, every family was obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few fowls, and some days' work, at the highest.
"It was only after 1811 that the ultimate and real usurpation was enacted, the forcible, transformation ofclan-propertyinto theprivate property, in the modern sense,of the chief. The person who stood at the head of this economical revolution, was the Countess of Sutherland and Marchioness of Stafford.
"Let us first state that the ancestors of the marchioness were the 'great men' of the most northern part of Scotland, of very near three-quarters of Sutherlandshire. This county is more extensive than many French departments or small German principalities. When the Countess of Sutherland inherited these estates, which she afterward brought to her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, afterward Duke of Sutherland, the population of them was already reduced to 15,000. The countess resolved upon a radical economical reform, and determined upon transforming the whole tract of country into sheep-walks. From 1814 to 1820, these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3000 families, were systematically expelled and exterminated. All their villages were demolished and burned down, and all their fields converted into pasturage. British soldiers were commanded for this execution, and came to blows with the natives. An old woman refusing to quit her hut, was burned in the flames of it. Thus the countess appropriated to herselfseven hundred and ninety-four thousand acres of land, which from time immemorial had belonged to the clan. She allotted to the expelled natives about six thousand acres—two acres per family. These six thousand acres had been lying waste until then, and brought no revenue to the proprietors. The countess was generous enough to sell the acre at 2s. 6d. on an average, to the clan-men who for centuries past had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the unrightfully appropriated clan-land she divided into twenty-nine large sheep-farms, each of them inhabited by one single family, mostly English farm-labourers; and in 1821 the 15,000 Gaels had already been superseded by 131,000 sheep.
"A portion of the aborigines had been thrown upon the sea-shore, and attempted to live by fishing. They became amphibious, and, as an English author says, lived half on land and half on water, and after all did not half live upon both."
Throughout the North of Scotland the tenants of the small grazing farms into which the Highland counties had been divided, have been ousted for the purpose of creating sheep-walks, and to such an extent has this been carried, that where once, and at no distant period, were numerous black-cattle farms, not an inhabitant is now to be seen for many miles.[121] The work, too, is still going on. "The example of Sutherland," says Mr. Thornton,[122] "is imitated in the neighbouring counties."
The misery of these poor people is thus described:—
"Hinds engaged by the year are seldom paid more than two-thirds of what they would receive in the South, and few of them are fortunate enough to obtain regular employment. Farm-servants, however, form only a small proportion of the peasantry, a much greater number being crofters, or tenants of small pieces of ground, from which they derive almost their whole subsistence. Most of them live very miserably. The soil is so poor, and rents in some instances so exorbitant, that occupiers of four or five acres can do little more than maintain themselves, yet it is their aid alone that saves their still poorer brethren from starvation. This is true even of Sutherland, which is commonly represented as a highly improved county, and in which a signal change for the better is said to have taken place in the character and habits of the people.[123] Recent inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hillsides fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as thin and pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a London alley.[124] Still more deplorable are the scenes exhibited in the Western Highlands, especially on the coasts and in the adjoining islands. A large population has there been assembled, so ill provided with any means of support, that during part of almost every year from 45,000 to 80,000 [125] of them are in a state of destitution, and entirely dependent upon charity. Many of the heads of families hold crofts from four to seven acres in extent, but these, notwithstanding their small size, and the extreme barrenness of the soil, have often two, three, and sometimes even four families upon them. One estate in the Hebrides, the nominal rent of which is only £5200 a year, is divided into 1108 crofts, and is supposed to have more than 8300 persons living upon it. In another instance a rental of £1814 is payable (for little is really paid) by 365 crofters, and the whole population of the estate is estimated at more than 2300. In Cromarty, 1500 persons are settled upon an estate let nominally for £750, but "paying not more than half that sum."—Thornton, 74.
"Of course, they live most wretchedly. Potatoes are the usual food, for oatmeal is considered a luxury, to be reserved for high days and holidays, but even potatoes are not raised in sufficient abundance. The year's stock is generally exhausted before the succeeding crop is ripe, and the poor are then often in a most desperate condition, for the poor-law is a dead letter in the North of Scotland, and the want of a legal provision for the necessitous is but ill supplied by the spontaneous contributions of the land-owners."—Ibid. 76.
At the moment of writing this, the journals of the day furnish information that famine prevails in the Hebrides, and that "in the Isle of Skye alone there are 10,000 able-bodied persons at this time without work, without food, and without credit."
The condition of these poor people would certainly be much improved could they find some indulgent master who would purchase them at such prices as would make it to his interest to feed, clothe, and lodge them well in return for their labour.
In the days of Adam Smith about one-fifth of the surface of Scotland was supposed to be entailed, and he saw the disadvantages of the system to be so great that he denounced the system as being "founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions—the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be retained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago." Instead of changing the system, and doing that which might tend to the establishment of greater freedom of trade in land, the movement has been in a contrary direction, and to such an extent that one-half of Scotland is now supposed to be entailed; and yet, singularly enough, this is the system advocated by Mr. McCulloch, a follower in the foot-steps of Adam Smith, as being the one calculated "to render all classes more industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment."
The effects of the system are seen in the enormous rents contracted to be paid for the use of small pieces of land at a distance from market, the failure in the payment of which makes the poor cultivator a mere slave to the proprietor. How the latter use their power, may be seen by the following extract from a Canadian journal of 1851:—
"A Colonel ——-, the owner of estates in South Uist and Barra, in the highlands of Scotland, has sent off over 1100 destitute tenants and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; assuring them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at Quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free passage to Upper Canada, where they would be provided with work by the government agents, and receive grants of land on certain imaginary conditions. Seventy-one of the last cargo of four hundred and fifty have signed a statement that some of them fled to the mountains when an attempt was made to force them to emigrate. 'Whereupon,' they add, 'Mr. Fleming gave orders to a policeman, who was accompanied by the ground officer of the estate in Barra, and some constables, to pursue the people who had run away among the mountains, which they did, and succeeded in capturing about twenty from the mountains and from other islands in the neighbourhood; but only came with the officers on an attempt being made to handcuff them, and that some who ran away were not brought back; in consequence of which four families, at least, have been divided, some having come in the ships to Quebec, while other members of the same families are left in the highlands.'"
"On board the Conrad and the Birman were 518 persons from Mull and Tyree, sent out by his grace the Duke of ——-, who provided them with a free passage to Montreal, where on arrival they presented the same appearance of destitution as those from South Uist, sent out by Colonel ——-, that is, 'entirely destitute of money and provisions.'"
Numbers of these people perished, as we are told, of disease and want of food in the winter which followed their arrival in Canada; and that such would have been the case might naturally have been anticipated by those who exported them.
The wretched cotters who are being everywhere expelled from the land are forced to take refuge in cities and towns, precisely as we see now to be the case in Ireland. "In Glasgow," says Mr. Thornton—
"There are nearly 30,000 poor Highlanders, most of them living in a state of misery, which shows how dreadful must have been the privations to which such misery is preferred. Such of them as are able-bodied obtain employment without much difficulty, and may not perhaps have much reason to complain of deficiency of the first requisites of life; but the quarter they inhabit is described as enclosing a larger amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease, than could have been supposed to exist in one spot in any civilized country. It consists of long lanes called 'wynds,' so narrow that a cart could scarcely pass through them, opening upon 'closes,' or courts, about 15 or 20 feet square, round which the houses, mostly three stories high, are built, and in the centre of which is a dunghill. The houses are occupied indiscriminately by labourers of the lowest class, thieves, and prostitutes, and every apartment is filled with a promiscuous crowd of men and women, all in the most revolting state of filth. Amid such scenes and such companions as these, thousands of the most intelligent of the Highlanders are content to take refuge, for it is precisely those who are best educated and best informed that are most impatient of the penury they have to endure at home.
"The inhabitants of the Glasgow wynds and closes may be likened to those of the Liverpool cellars, or to those of the worst parts of Leeds, St. Giles's, and Bethnal Green, in London; and every other class of the Scottish urban labouring population may likewise be delineated with the same touches (more darkened, however,) which have been used in describing the corresponding class in English towns. Manufacturing operatives are in pretty much the same position in both countries. Those of Scotland shared even more largely than their Southern brethren in the distress of 1840-2, when Paisley in particular exhibited scenes of wo far surpassing any thing that has been related of Bolton or Stockport."—P. 77.
The extent to which these poor people have been driven from the land may be judged by the following statement of population and house-accommodation:—
Persons toPopulation. Inhabited houses. a house.—————- ————————- —————1841…… 2,628,957…… 503,357…… 5.221851…… 2,870,784…… 366,650…… 7.83
Intemperance and immorality keep pace with the decline in the power of men over their own actions, as is shown in the following statement of the consumption of British spirits, under circumstances almost precisely similar as regards the amount of duty:—
Duty. Gallons. ——- ———— 1802………….. 3.10-1/2….. 1,158,558 1831………….. 3.4 …….. 5,700,689 1841………….. 3.8 …….. 5,989,905 1851………….. 3.8 …….. 6,830,710
In 1801 the population was 1,599,068, and since that time it has increased eighty per cent., whereas the consumption of spirits has grown almost six hundred per cent.!
The poor people who are expelled from the land cannot be sold. The hammer of the auctioneer cannot be allowed to separate parents from children, or husbands from wives, but poverty, drunkenness, and prostitution produce a similar effect, and in a form even more deplorable. In the five years preceding 1840, every fifth person in Glasgow had been attacked by fever, and the deaths therefrom amounted to almost five thousand.
It is impossible to study the condition of this portion of the United Kingdom without arriving at the conclusion that society is rapidly being divided into the very rich and the very poor, and that the latter are steadily declining in their power of self-government, and becoming more and more slaves to the former. Centralization tends here, as everywhere, to absenteeism, and "absenteeism," says Dr. Forbes of Glasgow [126] —
"Is in its results everywhere the same. All the transactions and communications between the richer and the poorer classes, have thus substituted for them the sternness of official agency, in the room of that kind and generous treatment which, let them meet unrestrained, the more prosperous children of the same parent would in almost every case pay to their less fortunate brothers. * * * Where the power of sympathy has been altogether or nearly abolished among the different ranks of society, one of the first effects appears in a yawning and ever-widening gulf of poverty which gathers round its foundations. As the lofty shore indicates the depth of the surrounding ocean, the proud pinnacles of wealth in society are the indices of a corresponding depression among the humbler ranks. The greatest misery of man is ever the adjunct of his proudest splendour."
Such are the results everywhere of that system which looks to converting England into a great workshop and confining the people of all other nations to the labours of the field. In Jamaica, it annihilated three-fifths of all the negroes imported, and it is now rapidly driving the remainder into barbarism and ultimately to annihilation. In the Southern States, it causes the export of men, women, and children, and the breaking up of families. In India, it has caused famines and pestilences, and is now establishing the slave trade in a new form. In Ireland, it has in half a century carried the people back to a condition worthy only of the darkest part of the Middle Ages, and is now extirpating them from the land of their fathers. In Scotland, it is rapidly dividing the population into two parts—the master on one hand, and the slave on the other. How it has operated, and is now operating, in England itself, we may how examine.
The Roman people sought to centralize within their walls the power of governing and taxing all the nations of the earth, and to a great extent they succeeded; but in the effort to acquire power over others they lost all power over themselves. As the city grew in size and as its great men became greater, the proportions of the people everywhere became less. The freemen of the Campagna had almost disappeared even in the days of the elder Scipio, and their humble habitations had given way to palaces, the centre of great estates, cultivated by slaves. Step by step with the increase of power abroad came increased consolidation of the land at home, and, as the people were more and more driven from the soil the city grew in numbers and magnificence, and in the poverty and rapacity of its inhabitants. The populace needed to be fed, and that they might be so there was established a great system of poor-laws, carried into effect by aid of the taxation of distant provinces, at whose expense they were both fed and entertained. They demanded cheap food, and they obtained their desires at the cost of the cultivators, abroad and at home, who became more and more enslaved as Rome itself was more cheaply supplied. Desires grew with their indulgence, and the greater the facility for living without labour, the greater became the necessity for seeking "new markets" in which to exercise their powers of appropriation, and the more extensive became the domain of slavery. Bankers and middlemen grew more and more in power, and while the wealth of Crassus enabled him to obtain the control of the East, enormous loans gave to Cæsar the command of the West, leaving to Pompey and his moneyed friends the power to tax the centre and the South. Next, Augustus finds the city of brick and leaves it of marble; and Herodes Atticus appears upon the stage sole improver, and almost sole owner, in Attica, once so free, while bankers and nobles accumulate enormous possessions in Africa, Gaul, and Britain, and the greater the extent of absentee ownership the greater becomes the wretchedness and the crime of the pauper mob of Rome. Still onward the city grows, absorbing the wealth of the world, and with it grow the poverty, slavery, and rapacity of the people, the exhaustion of provinces, and the avarice and tyranny of rulers and magistrates, until at length the empire, rotten at the heart, becomes the prey of barbarians, and all become slaves alike,—thus furnishing proof conclusive that the community which desires to command respect for its own rightsmustpractise respect for those of others; or in other words, must adopt as its motto the great lesson which lies at the base of all Christianity—"Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you."
A survey of the British Empire at the present moment presents to view some features so strongly resembling those observed in ancient Rome as to warrant calling the attention of the reader to their careful observation. Like Rome, England has desired to establish political centralization by aid of fleets and armies, but to this she has added commercial centralization, far more destructive in its effects, and far more rapid in its operation. Rome was content that her subjects should occupy themselves as they pleased, either in the fields or in the factories, provided only that they paid their taxes. England, on the contrary, has sought to restrict her subjects and the people of the world in their modes of employment; and this she has done with a view to compel them to make all their exchanges in her single market, leaving to her to fix the prices of all she bought and all she sold, thus taxing them at her discretion in both time and money. She has sought to compel all other nations to follow the plough, leaving to her the loom and the anvil, and thus to render it necessary that they should bring to her all their products in the rudest form, at great cost of transportation, and total loss of the manure yielded by them, thus exhausting their soil and themselves; and the consequences of this are seen in the ruin, depopulation, and slavery of the West Indies, Ireland, India, Portugal, Turkey, and other countries that have been partially or wholly subjected to her dominion. Hence it is that she is seen to be everywhere seeking "new markets." Bengal having been in a great degree exhausted, it became necessary to annex the North-west provinces, and thence we find her stretching out her hand at one moment to seize on Affghanistan, at another to force the Chinese into permitting her to smuggle opium, and at a third to expel the Sikhs and occupy the Punjab, as preliminary to this invasion and subjection of the Burman Empire. She needs, and must have new markets, as Rome needed new provinces, and for the same reason, the exhaustion of the old ones. She rejoices with great joy at the creation of a new market in Australia, and looks with a longing eye on the Empire of Japan, whose prosperous people, under a peaceful government, prefer to avoid entering on the same course of action that has resulted in the reduction of the wealthy and powerful Hindostan to its present distressed condition.
It was against this system that Adam Smith cautioned his countrymen, as not only a violation of "the most sacred rights" of man, but as leading inevitably to consequences in the highest degree injurious to themselves, in depreciating the value of both labour and capital. Up to his time, however, it had been carried out in a very small degree. The colonies were then few in number, but, those were heavily taxed, as has been shown in the candid admission ofJoshua Gee, that the colonists carried home but one-fourth of the value of the commodities they brought to the great market.[127] The system was then only in its infancy. In India, the Company had but then first obtained the concession of a right to act in the capacity of tax-gatherer for Bengal. On this continent, the right thus to tax the colonists was seriously contested, andThe Wealth of Nationshad not been long before the world before it came to be explicitly and successfully denied. The tendency of the system was, however, so obvious to its author, that he desired to warn his countrymen against the effort to build up "colonies of customers," as unworthy of a great people, and worthy only of "a nation of shopkeepers,"—and happy for them would it have been had his advice been taken. It was not. From that day to the present, every step has been in the direction against which he cautioned them, as was shown in a former chapter, and from year to year the people of England have become more and more the mere traders in the products of the labours of other men, and more and more compelled to seek "new markets," as did the Roman people,—the only difference being that in every case the exhaustion has been accomplished with a rapidity unparalleled in the annals of Rome, or of the world. A century since, India was rich, and now her government, collecting annually one-fifth of the whole value of the land, is sustained only by means of a monopoly of the power to poison and enslave the Chinese by means of a vile drug, and the poor Hindoo is forced to seek for food in the swamps of Jamaica and Guiana. Half a century since, Ireland had a highly cultivated society, with a press that sent forth large editions of the most valuable and expensive books produced in England, and now her people are decimated by famine and pestilence. Twenty years since, there existed some little prospect that the poor negroes of Jamaica and Guiana might at some future time become civilized, but that hope has passed away, as has the value of the land upon which they have been employed. What has been the effect of this course of policy upon the condition of the people of England we may now inquire.
In the days of Adam Smith it was estimated that there were in that country 220,000 owners of land, and as a necessary consequence of this extensive ownership of property, there was a very decided tendency toward an increase in the freedom of man, as shown in the efforts made but a few years later for obtaining a reform in various matters of government. The French Revolution came, however, and now the doctrine of "ships, colonies, and commerce" had much to do in bringing about a state of war, during the whole of which England enjoyed almost a monopoly of the trade of the world. Having all the woollen and cotton machinery, and almost all the machinery for the production of iron, she was enabled to buy produce and sell manufactures at her own prices; and thus were the already wealthy greatly enriched. The poor-houses were, however, everywhere filled with starving labourers, and so rapidly did their number increase that it became at length necessary to give to the statute of Elizabeth a new and enlarged construction; and here do we find another coincidence in the working of Roman and British centralization. A still further one will be found in the fact that precisely as the labourer was losing all power of self-government, the little proprietors of land disappeared, to be replaced by day-labourers.
The peace, however came, and with it a desire on the part of other nations to supply themselves with cloth, iron, and other manufactured commodities; and to enable them to carry into effect their wishes, many of them imposed duties having for their object the bringing together of the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow. This produced, of course, a necessity for new exertions to underwork those nations, leading to constant improvements of machinery, each tending to enable the capitalist more and more to accumulate fortune and purchase land, the consolidation of which has been continued until at length it has resulted in the fact, that in place of the 220,000 English land-owners of the days of Adam Smith, there now exist but 30,000, while all the land of Scotland has, as is stated, accumulated in the hands of 6000 persons.
As the 190,000 proprietors came by degrees to be represented by day-labourers, pauperism increased, and the labourer became from year to year more enslaved, and more dependent for existence upon the favours of farmers, parish beadles, and constables, until at length a reform of the system having become absolutely necessary, it was undertaken. Instead, however, of inquiring into the causes of this increased dependence with a view to their abolition, it was determined to abolish the relief that they had rendered necessary, and hence the existence of the new poor-law. By virtue of its provisions, inability to obtain food became a crime punishable by the separation of husbands from wives and parents from children; and thus we see that in the last twenty years English legislation has tended greatly in the same direction with the domestic slave trade of this country.
Consolidation of the land drove the labourers from the cultivation of the soil, while improved machinery tended constantly to drive them out from the factory, and thus were the poor made poorer and weaker, as the rich grew richer and stronger. Ireland, too, contributed largely to the same result. As the Act of Union gradually closed her factories and drove her people to cultivation as the sole means of supporting life, they found themselves, like the Italians of olden time, forced to emigrate to the place where taxes were distributed, in the hope of obtaining wages, and their competition threw the English labourer still more in the hands of the capitalist. From year to year the small proprietor was seen to pass into the condition of a day-labourer, and the small employing mechanic or tradesman to pass into a receiver of wages, and thus did the whole people tend more and more to become divided into two great classes, separated from each other by an impassable gulf, the very rich and the very poor, the master and the slave.
As England became more and more flooded with the wretched people of the sister island, driven from home in search of employment, the wealthy found it more and more easy to accomplish "the great works" for which, as the LondonTimesinform us, the country is indebted to the "cheap labour of Ireland," and the greater the influx of this labour the more rapid was the decline in the power of both Ireland and Britain to furnish a market for the products of the manufacturing, labour of England. Hence arose, of course, a necessity for looking abroad for new markets to take the place of those before obtained at home, and thus cheap labour, aconsequenceof the system, became in its turn acauseof new efforts at dispensing with and further cheapening labour. As the Irishman could no longer buy, it became necessary that the Hindoo should be driven from his own market. As the Highlander was expelled, it became more and more necessary to underwork the spinners and weavers of China. As the Bengalese now become impoverished, there arises a necessity for filling the Punjab, and Affghanistan, Burmah and Borneo, with British goods. Pauperism lies necessarily at the root of such a system. "It is," said a speaker at the late Bradford election for representative in Parliament—
"Its root. That system is based on foreign competition. Now I assert, thatunder the buy cheap and sell dear principle, brought to bear on foreign competition, the ruin of the working and small trading classes must go on. Why?Labour is the creator of all wealth. A man must work before a grain is grown, or a yard is woven. But there is no self-employment for the working-man in this country. Labour is a hired commodity—labour is a thing in the market that is bought and sold; consequently, as labour creates all wealth, labour is the first thing bought. 'Buy cheap! buy cheap!' Labour is bought in the cheapest market. But now comes the next. 'Sell dear! sell dear!' Sell what?Labors produce. To whom? To the foreigner—ay! and tothe labourer himself—for labour not being self-employed, the labourer isnotthe partaker of the first-fruits of his toil. 'Buy cheap, sell dear.' How do you like it? 'Buy cheap, sell dear.' Buy the working-man's labour cheaply, and sell back to that very working-man the produce of his own labour dear! The principle of inherent loss is in the bargain. The employer buys the labour cheap—he sells, and on the sale he must, make a profit: he sells to the working-man himself—and thus every bargain between employer and employed is a deliberate cheat on the part of the employer. Thus labour has to sink through eternal loss, that capital may rise through lasting fraud. But the system stops not here. THIS IS BROUGHT TO BEAR ON FOREIGN COMPETITION—WHICH MEANS, WE MUST RUIN THE TRADE OF OTHER COUNTRIES, AS WE HAVE RUINED THE LABOUR OF OUR OWN. How does it work? The high-taxed country has to undersell the low-taxed.Competition abroad is constantly increasing, consequently cheapness must increase also.Therefore, wages in England must keep constantly falling. And how do they effect the fall? Bysurplus labour. By monopoly of the land, which drives more hands than are wanted into the factory. By monopoly of machinery, which drives those hands into the street; by woman labour, which drives the man from the shuttle; by child labour, which drives the woman from the loom. Then planting their foot upon that living base of surplus, they press its aching heart beneath their heel, and cry 'Starvation! Who'll work? A half loaf is better than no bread at all;' and the writhing mass grasps greedily at their terms. Such is the system for the working-man. But, electors, how does it operate on you? how does it affect home trade, the shopkeeper, poor's rate, and taxation?For every increase of competition abroad there must be an increase of cheapness at home.Every increase of cheapness in labour is based on increase of labour surplus, and this surplus is obtained by an increase of machinery. I repeat, how does this operate on you? The Manchester liberal on my left establishes a new patent, and throws three hundred men as a surplus in the streets. Shopkeepers! Three hundred customers less. Rate-payers! Three hundred paupers more. But, mark me! The evil stops not there.These three hundred men operate first to bring down the wages of those who remain at work in their own trade.The employer says, 'Now I reduce your wages.' The men demur. Then he adds, 'Do you see those three hundred men who have just walked out?you may change places if you like, they're sighing to come in on any terms, for they're starving.' The men feel it, and are crushed. Ah! you Manchester liberal! Pharisee of politics! those men are listening—have I got you now? But the evil stops not yet.Those men, driven from their own trade, seek employment in others, when they swell the surplus and bring wages down."